We’ve been around this rumor before, but it seems to be picking up steam again.

A new report says that a fourth-generation Apple TV, App Store and all the trimmings will arrive in September. The new Apple TV will be unveiled along with the latest iPhones, and sport Apple’s A8 chip along with a slimmer look.

The new Apple TV will reportedly feature a control with a touchpad input, and feature Siri on board.

There’s some cool stuff to be had in Intel’s upcoming Skylake processor family.

A leaked article that hit prior to the Gamescom trade show in Germany shows that the processors are expected to offer a 10 to 20 percent CPU performance boost in single and multi-threaded applications, with lower power consumption, and 30 percent faster Intel HD integrated graphics performance on average compared to current-generation Broadwell processors. The improved energy efficiency will also result in up to 30 percent longer battery life.

It’s the shipping times that tend to give away when a new product is in the works.

Over the past several weeks, the shipping times for Apple’s 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro have increased, jumping from one to two weeks and then to two to three weeks.

With the Worldwide Developers Conference taking place next month and Apple typically announcing new products at this event, Intel’s current Broadwell chip is rumored to be in short supply. As a result, it’s unknown as to whether Apple will refresh the 15-inch notebook, which was last updated in the summer of 2014.

The Apple Watch has gone through a number of teardowns since its release on April 24. The newest release from Chipworks has revealed the wearable to feature 512MB of RAM, a Broadcom Wi-Fi chip, an accelerometer/gyrometer from STMicroelectronics, 30 individual components inside the 26mm x 28mm S1 package, a feat Chipworks calls “quite an accomplishment.”

Among the more interesting discoveries Chipworks has made is the manufacturing process for the APL0778 application processor (CPU/GPU). It was made with Samsung’s 28 nanometer LP process, which is no longer cutting edge technology. A 28-nanometer processor was also used in the iPhone 5s, while the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus used 20-nanometer A8 processors.

A report released on Thursday confirmed that Apple is contracting Samsung to manufacture A-series processors expected for inclusion in next-generation iPhone handsets.

Citing sources close to the story, Samsung is slated to fabricate Apple’s forthcoming system on chip design, potentially dubbed “A9,” bound for this year’s iOS device lineup. If true, Samsung would reclaim a position currently filled by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co, the world’s largest chipmaker.

Share this:

If you’re curious as to the specs and benchmarks of Intel’s new Core M processor, which will be finding its way into the new 12-inch MacBook, the cool cats at AnandTech have gone bananas with a series of tests.

The Core M processor, which runs on 4.5 watts of power, features two cores and hyperthreading. The full test suite covers applications like Cinebench R15, X264 HD encoding and Mozilla Kraken testing. In the end, the Core M processor edged out its competition, defying the stereotype that “Core M equates slow” and that 4.5 watts of power limited the performance you’d get from the CPU.

Share this:

Apple and Samsung may have their ongoing legal squabbles, but that doesn’t stop them from making el dinero.

Per AppleInsider and the Maeil Business Insider, Samsung has won a huge percentage of orders for the production of Apple’s next-generation “A9″ system-on-a-chip, variations of which are expected to power this year’s iOS device lineup, according to a new report.

Citing industry sources, the South Korean publication reported on Sunday that Samsung’s Austin, Texas fab is responsible for a 75 percent slice of orders for Apple’s upcoming SoC, presumably dubbed “A9″ if the company’s A-series naming convention is followed.

Despite years of legal acrimony between Apple and Samsung, there’s still money to be made in processor manufacturing.

Per 9to5Mac and Korea’s Electronic Times, industry insiders have stated that Samsung Electronics began production of Apple’s A9 in the Austin plant in the US using the 14nm FinFET technology. Samsung has production lines capable of FinFET process production in Austin, US and Giheung, Korea, but began to produce A9 only in Austin as it is in the initial stage.

There’s a lot to be said for the A8 processor in the current iPhone 6 and 6 Plus handsets.

According to MacRumors and the developers of the WALTR music app, the dual-core A8 chip powering Apple’s iPhone 6 and 6 Plus appears to be capable of handling 4K video playback, despite the fact that the two iPhones have native resolutions of 1334 x 750 and 1920 x 1080 pixels, respectively.

4K video playback on the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus was first discovered by the developers behind WALTR, a Mac app that’s designed to make it easy to upload and convert any music or video file to an iPad or iPhone for native playback.

There may be more to Apple’s A8X processor than was originally thought.

Per 9to5Mac, further analysis of the processor by AnandTech showed that initial guesses as to the GPU specification of the Apple A8X chip, exclusively available in the iPad Air 2, were wrong. In fact, the chip uses a unique 8 cluster design. AnandTech describes the discovery as “even better than I thought”. Although the customizations are limited, this represents a big step for the company as it is now dabbling in both custom CPU and GPU engineering, even if the leap over generally-available components in this instance is small.

Effectively, Apple has engineered a way to stick two Imagination GX6450 PowerVR chips on the same die.